GURPS Prime Directive
GURPS Prime Directive is a Powered by GURPS set in the Star Fleet Universe, a variant of the canonal Star Trek Universe. Tech Levels Both the 3rd and 4th editions of GURPS Prime Directive used the 3e Tech Scale. More over they highball the TLs. The Original Star Trek series (TOS) provides a lot of details regarding Federation Technology. The following uses the lowest TL needed to have the advancement. 3e TLs TOS Transportation: TL9. The transporter is the oddball at TL 14. TOS Weapons & Armor: All over the TL9-11 range. Starships and Stunners are 9, disrupters are 10 and force screens, tractors beams and antimatter missiles are 11. TOS Power: Antimatter is TL10. TOS Medicine: Mccoy comments that Federation medicine can deal with every organ of the body but the brain ("Menagerie" and "Spock's Brain"). The Compendium II notes brain transplant as a TL8 (likely late TL8) development. Similarly there is no evidence for and plenty against TL 9's panimmuity in Kirk's time ("Requiem for Methuselah", "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky", "Journey to Eden"), no evidence of any form of braintaping until the TNG era, and Longevity is another TL9 development missing from Kirk's time ("Deadly Years"). There is one TL9 hiccup in all of this; Mccoy uses something akin to Suspend on Kirk in "Amok Time" which is before "Spock's Brain" and "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky" (where large amounts of medical knowledge was gained). So the conclusion from all this is in Kirk's time TOS Medicine is 8 with one 8+1 "Triox compound". Scotty indicates that the Star Trek timeline deviated from our own because transistors were the technology of choice for spaceships in the 1990s"Space Seed" and there is no reference to computer chips. So TOS is TL(6+3) to TL(7+2) but only if you ignore "Piece of the Action", "Patterns of Force", and Worlds of the Federation. 4e TL In the GURPS Tech Level scale large hunks of TOS tech wound up as Superscience: FTL travel, transporter, force-field technology, disintegrators (Phasers) and their crude time travel. This removes these from figuring out what the TL is as superscience can be any TL. Surpassingly, the only reference to how powerful antimatter is ('less than one ounce (~28.6 grams) of antimatter is more powerful than ten thousand cobalt bombs'"Obsession") is totally useless as there is no set range energy output for a cobalt bomb. Semi-Portable Antimatter Generator (TL11) would fit the 5 year mission which could give a baseline for Power. However, episodes "City on the Edge of Forever" and "Piece of the Action" create huge problems with that as a baseline for all Federation Tech. Spock must be able to build a computer able to interface with a tricorder with TL6 materials (a staggering -11 to skill at TL11, assuming Spock doesn't have related Wildcard Skills) and more importantly Iotians who took 100 years to go from TL5 to TL6 even with books on how to build TL6 equipmentbecause they are imitative not inventive. must be able to take apart one communicator, learn how a part called a transtator works, and be able to reproduce Federation Tech in a "few years".This feat is confirmed in Worlds of the Federation though again once the Iotians reached that TL they stopped. Since TL four levels higher then your own is impossible to study much less reproduceBasic Set 168 the highest Federation tech in this case can be is TL9. This matches other non superscience tech the Federation had in the TOS era: * Hibernation Chamber:"Space Seed" TL9 * Pneumohypo:throughout the TOS era TL9 * Diagnostic: Bedthroughout the TOS era TL9 * Androids: TL9; by cultures more advanced then the Federation."What are Little Girls Made of?""I, Mudd""Return to Tomorrow". * Brainscannerthroughout the TOS era: TL9 The conclusion is the Federation is TL(6+3)^ to TL(7+2)^ due to the transtator with Antimatter generators TL11 TOS divergences from OTL While much of this has been reconned in the movies and later versions of Star Trek this is how things were when TOS ended in 1969. The immortal In 3834 BCE in the area of Mesopotamia a man was born who quickly discovered he was immortal via "instant tissue regeneration coupled with some perfect form of biological renewal." He would become many famous people including Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson, Leonardo da Vinci, and Johannes Brahms. Ancient times Two groups of aliens came to earth. One group who arrived c 2700 BCE became the Olympian gods"Who Mourns for Adonais?" and the other tried to follow the ideal of Plato while hiding themselve among earth people."Plato's Stepchildren" Both groups of aliens left Earth after the collapse of the Greek civilization. Rome had no sun worshipers"Bread and Circuses" In OTL Rome, in fact, had several cults that revered sun gods including Helios Apollo and Sol from the Greeks, Mithras from the Persians, and Elagabalus from the Syrians. Then from the 3rd century on there was Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") which may have been a new sect or a revival of an old one. So two of these gods in English would have been called "Sun". 18th century The Preservers visited Earth and relocated some Indian tribes to a distant world."The Paradise Syndrome" 1888 An being of pure thought and pure energy becomes Jack the Ripper."A Wolf in the Fold" WWI In the TOS reality only 6 million died in WWI."Bread and Circuses" In OTL over 41 million died in WWI. 1932 The energy being kills 7 women in Shanghai, China."A Wolf in the Fold". This could have happen in OTL and forgotten given the chaos surrounding the January 28 Incident WWII In the TOS reality only 11 million died in WWII."Bread and Circuses" In OTL the range is 50 to more then 80 million. The prelude to the Eugenic Wars The creation of supermen via selective breeding who would take over 40 nations in 1993"Space Seed" means the program went back at least 2 generations and likely more. At 20 years a generation this puts one in the 1950s at the latest though earlier seems more logical. The Nazis were close to inventing the atomic bomb and would use the V2 rocket to deliver it."City on the Edge of Forever" In OTL the Nazis didn't even start seriously look at the atom bomb or V2 until they started loosing the war.NOVA: Nazis and the Bomb. In fact Germany only started looking at atom bombs in 1942 putting them three years behind the US program which had started in 1939 and they never caught up--they only got to an early part the 1942 stage of Manhattan project in 1945. From what we can put together the best Germany could have produced in 1946 was a conventionally powered "dirty bomb" : "At best this would have been far less destructive than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Rather it is an example of scientists trying to make any sort of weapon they could in order to help stave off defeat." NOVA: Nazis and the Bomb. The V2 has even more problems as in OTL when Hitler was first shown the plans for the V2 in late 1941 he was dismissive of the V2 as essentially an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher costIrons, Roy. Hitler's terror weapons: The price of vengeance. p. 181. It was not until 1944 with German moral waning in the face of defeat after defeat that Hitler decided on building the V2. Also the V2 simply didn't have the ability to carry an A-bomb; the V2 had the ability to carry a 2,200 pounds payload while Little Boy (smallest A-bomb of the time) was 9,700 pounds. This is why Stalin put so many resources into duplicating the Superfortress instead of simply copying the V2 and slapping an A-bomb on top of it. Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth ever knew"Patterns of Force" In OTL per the 1960 book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the Nazi hierarchy was a web of competition, with many high officials bitterly opposed to each other. Consequently, their jurisdictions often overlapped and/or collided. Hence, this conflict actually reduced or even, in some cases, completely negated governmental efficiency. The integrated circuit many have not existed clear into the 1990s Scotty comments about 1990s spaceships using bulky and solid transistor units"Space Seed" implying the integrated circuit (successfully demonstrated in 1958) didn't exist in TOS timeline as late as the 1990s. 1967 The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is not signed allowing the United States to launch an orbital nuclear warhead platform to counter a similar launch by other powers in 1968. In OTL only the USSR launched such platforms as part of the “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System” or FOBS."Assignment: Earth" 1968 The United States efforts to counter FOBS is interfered with by Gary Seven to scare it and the USSR out of the arms race. Thanks to interaction with the Enterprise the US version of FOBS explodes exactly one hundred and four miles above the Earth."Assignment: Earth" Moral issues of the Prime Directive In the TOS era the Prime Directive was not as rigidly followed as it would be in the TNG era where it was effectively dogma and was too often used to short circuit actual moral choice.Examination of Star Trek's Prime DirectiveThe Prime Directive: Star Trek's Doctrine of Moral Laziness Time Travel It was established that time travel the TOS reality (and all the later non Abrams Timeline successors) works under Plastic time"City on the Edge of Forever" which provides an excellent explanation for any and all continuity issues: they are the product of time travel meddling. The Timelines Star Trek has four different "official" timelines: *Canonal: Live action TV series (TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager) + movies + "Yesteryear" of TAS *Star Fleet Universe: mixture of TOS, TAS and fan sources up to 1979. *Kelvin Star Trek (the Abrams movies): the product of the 2005 Viacom split where Paramount got the rights to the movies but CBS owned the TV series and toys based on Canonal Star Trek. To allow Paramount to make more Star Trek a special license requiring significant deviation from Canonal Star Trek.Star Trek Discovery and the Return of Picard: The Controversies Behind The Scenes and Star Trek Discovery: The Prime Deception – CBS and Paramount Viacom Rights Explained *Hybrid: For complicated reasons Star Trek Discovery was done under the Paramount license which is why despite being said to be part of canonal Star Trek it looks like it belongs to the Kelvin timeline. There is hope that the remerger of CBS and Paramount will fix things but what Star Trek will look like post merger is unknown. Related material * Star Trek Writers Guide - the reference guide writers and editors of the original series were supposed to use. * GURPS Klingons (Warehouse 23) * GURPS Romulans (Warehouse 23) * GURPS Federation (Warehouse 23) References Category:GURPS Books Category:3rd Edition Category:4th Edition Category:Licensed worlds Category:Powered by GURPS